As the demon winked, Mae tried to call out. Tried to warn him. Screamed as loud as she could. But she couldn’t seem to make a sound.

It was as if her voice had been stolen.

Natch.

It was like a nightmare.

As Mae heard Sahvage’s heavy boots come down to the bathroom, closer and closer, she desperately tried to warn him. But then he stepped into the open doorway.

As he stopped short, tears fell from Mae’s eyes. I’m so sorry, she mouthed.

“Hi, honey,” the demon pronounced to him. “Evidently you’re home.”

Before Sahvage could respond, his body was slammed back against the hallway wall, the same kind of invisible-hand pressure that had hit Mae back in that underground lair making him strain and fight to breathe.

“So,” the demon said to Mae in a reasonable tone. “Here’s how this is going to go. You give me the Book, and I give you him. And before you go-off-sis with a bunch of exit demands, yes, I’ll leave. No offense, but this house, just like you, isn’t my style at all. Frankly, it needs a good goddamn fire. Do we have a deal? You give me what’s mine, I give you what’s yours. Even, Steven.”

Over on the wall, a good foot off the floor, Sahvage’s lips peeled back off his fangs from the agony, and the veins in his neck stood out in sharp relief.

“Oh, and P.S.,” the demon pointed out, “his life is your Jeopardy! theme. So when it runs out, you run out of time, and though I have other options to work with, he’ll be dead as a door handle. Or is it knob? I think it’s knob.”

Mae looked to the tub. Looked back to Sahvage.

As she met his eyes, she knew what she was going to decide before she was even aware of making a choice.

Standing in the face of such a source of great destruction, Mae recognized how destructive she herself had been. In her desperation, she had sacrificed too much; in her grief, she had taken herself over the edge . . . in her refusal to accept tragedy, she had brought so much of it to herself. To others.

Sahvage wasn’t the coward. She was.

“Have the Book,” she said loud and clearly. “Just have it. I never should have gone down this road to begin with.”

As she tossed the heavy weight over, the demon had a Christmas-morning expression on her face, all fury gone, nothing but delight. And then she was the one clasping the old, ugly thing to her perfect breasts.

There was a moment where her black eyes closed, as if in relief.

And then her lids popped open.

“Thank you,” she said with a strange sincerity. “You did the right thing. And I’m sorry about your brother. But honestly, you’re better off not fucking with death. It’s the one thing even I am careful about.”

Out in the hall, Sahvage’s straining body was slowly lowered back to the floor. And then he shook himself, as if he were casting off shackles.

“Mae,” he said as he reached out his arms—

Without warning, his head spun on the top of his spine with a sickening crack! and his body dropped to the floor in a heap.

The brunette went saucy-hip and forefingered the air. “Psych.”

“Sahvage!” Mae screamed at the top of her lungs.

OMG, the night was so picking up, Devina thought as she delicately sidestepped out of the female vampire’s way. She’d been in a really bad mood to begin with, but this display of tragic emotion? Come on.

It was better than sex.

Well, the meh sex she’d been having lately, at any rate. And she had the Book.

“Although you and I are going to have words,” she muttered at the thing. “Bad Book. You are a very, very bad Book.”

Out in the cramped hallway, the female vampire was gently rolling her stud over, the male’s loosey-goosey head flopping around, his sightless eyes staring at the floor, the wall—oh, and now the ceiling.

“You could try mouth-to-mouth,” Devina suggested, “but I don’t think it’s going to help.”

The female collapsed on that big, immobile chest, and positively wailed. And for a moment, Devina thought about making some wisecracks, just to cut the tension. ’Cuz this was getting a little intense.

And then it dawned on her.

No one was ever going to mourn her like this. No one was ever going to care whether she lived or died. Nobody was ever going to . . . love her like this.

Just as the pain shot through her chest, the female wrenched around.

With a gun in her hand.

As a wobbly red dot skated into her eyes, Devina recoiled—

The female screamed in fury as she pulled the trigger over and over again, the sound of the gun going off competing for airtime over the roaring grief.

And Devina had to give the bitch credit. She was a helluva shot.

The bullets ripped through flesh and bone, blowing chunks out on the tile, the floor, even into the tub with the female’s dead brother, all kinds of perfect features getting ruined as Devina was thrown back—

Click. Click. Click.

Devina opened the one eye that was still working. The female still had the gun straight out in front of her, and she was compulsively squeezing the trigger, even though nothing was coming out.

Lunging forward, she grabbed the female by the throat with one hand and took her careening down the hall into a pathetic little kitchen. As the vampire tripped and started falling, Devina gave her a shove—and a table with a cereal box and a bowl full of milk caught the scramble, everything splintering, chairs knocking over.

Devina kept the Book in her other hand as she went over and dragged the female up again and then pitched her against the counter. Against the cupboards. Against the stove.

And in proof that she was the superior entity, she managed to do all of that ping-pong’ing while she reknitted the gunshot injuries.

By the time the female slumped to the floor, things were back to rights.

Devina took the front of that throat one last time and tossed the piece of unresisting meat back against the empty wall by the door into what had to be the garage.

Holding the female in place with a spell, Devina fluffed her hair. “Well. That happened. And I’m going to settle a score now. You ruined my bag by fire. So I’m going to burn this piece-of-shit house down with you and your corpse boyfriend and your soggy, dead-ass, motherfucking thief of a brother in it.” She glanced around. And then stamped a heel with frustration. “Damn it, I don’t have marshmallows. Do you have—oh, never mind.”

She walked in a little circle and wondered where to start. “You know, I’ve always wanted to have my Oprah moment. Here it is! You have a flame . . . and you have a flame . . . and you have a flame.”

All around, little bursts of yellow and orange appeared on things: The back of the sofa and the corner of the carpet in the living room. The cupboard over the refrigerator. The archway into the hall. And there were more in the back bedrooms, too. Down in the basement as well.

“Phew.” She took a break and fanned herself. “Is it me or am I hot in here. And by the way, you still owe me at least two hundred grand. There’s no way this hovel is anywhere close to the cost of my bag.”

• • •

Up against the wall, Mae was losing consciousness—at least until the house burst into flames around her. As smoke and heat began to thicken the air, and her skin prickled in warning at the flames, a wave of adrenaline whipped her brain back in order.